A defiant stand on Romeo

Tuesday 1 October 2013 13:03 BST

Closer, Patrick Marber’s play about dating in the online chatroom, a hit in the Nineties with Imogen Stubbs, Clive Owen and the late Natasha Richardson among those who acted in it, is returning for its first West End revival. Director David Leveaux, whose Romeo and Juliet starring Orlando Bloom has just opened on Broadway, said staging Closer here would be his next project.

Leveaux’s Romeo and Juliet is being appreciated by more young New Yorkers than critics. “There are people who really want what they imagine to be their grandmother’s Romeo and Juliet but that’s not our job,” he told me. “There’s a particular critic that I think is pathologically wrong and dishonest about it.”

Let’s hope said critic doesn’t cross the Atlantic to catch his take on Closer.